Comparing Lives? Don’t. (1 min read)

We’ve heard it so many times that life isn’t a bed of roses. There are ups and downs and the successful ones are those who are strong enough to deal with the challenges and smile through the pain. Do you often find yourself looking at someone’s Instagram post thinking, oh my God, look at her, what a life man! She’s got everything and look at me and everything I have to deal with. It’s pretty normal to feel that way especially when you’re going through a phase of depression, anxiety or both. But stop yourself right there. Don’t compare lives because that girl who’s smiling in her Instagram posts is probably fighting a silent battle that no body knows about. The only thing you need to learn from the social media whilst you’re fighting a battle is to try and gather all the positivity and try to fill all those cracks in your life with it. I mean, instead of thinking how much better someone else’s life is from yours, maybe you could think, wow, look at her, she’s dealing with life’s challenges with so much positivity that you wouldn’t even know if there’s something wrong with her. Be that girl. Wake up with a smile on your face, with a positive mind and a clean heart, with the motivation to fight. Forget about how you cried yourself to sleep last night. It’s a new day and a new beginning, seize it!

We often make this mistake and it’s completely normal to be that way but we often don’t realize that when were so involved in someone’s Instagram or Facebook posts, we are comparing our lives to theirs. We’re unintentionally feeding our minds with the thought that someone has a better life than our own. This usually happens when you yourself are going through a hard time, you log in to probably distract yourself but then all of a sudden this post comes up and hey, your friend is on holiday and she or he is having a great time and you’re just sat there like, oh great. Why me? The thing is, this could probably make your hard time worse because the last thing you want is to start feeling like you haven’t been blessed at all. This is where you have to stop your thoughts, fight for your mind to think positively and let it change your situation. Make yourself strong enough to realize that it’s okay for someone else to enjoy their life when you’re going through a hard time because that hard time will end soon, and you’ve also had your good days! If it doesn’t help, log out! Logging out doesn’t mean you’ve fallen weak, it just means you need time by yourself, to fix yourself, to deal with issues and you don’t need to see what other people are doing in their life right now!

Here are some simple steps to take when you feel that you’re comparing your life to your Instagram or Facebook friends:

Gather all the good memories in your mind. Think about all those times in your life when you were blessed. (and trust me, you still are)

Look at the bright side! You might not believe it when it’s happening but every hardship has a blessing that isn’t quite evident till the hardship is over.

Log out. It’s not a bad thing. I think it’s the best way to get away from an anxious feeling.

Find something else to do, like walking outside, reading a book or just simply watching a movie

Come on, you can do it! You have it in you and you can control your mind. Turn everything into positivity, every approach into a positive approach and watch your situation change, watch the world become beautiful around you. The moment every negative thought is fought and defeated, every hardship starts to feel like a blessing.

13 thoughts on “Comparing Lives? Don’t. (1 min read)”

This is really helpful thank you. I often find myself comparing my life to others all based on social media posts and fail to remember how lucky I am and forget to appreciate how good my life is. Anxiety certainly doesn’t help but you can’t judge how perfect a life is based on a picture. I limit my social media time now and focus on my own life, still happy and encouraging of others but remembering to appreciate what I have too. Great read 😊

Amazing piece- couldn’t agree more. I had (old) friends from high school I didn’t talk to anymore, but was still connected to on social media such as Instagram and Facebook. Logging out does help- I even deactivated all my social media. I figured it would help me to stop comparing my life to the lifestyles my friends were portraying on my phone screen. It’s been about 6-7 months, and overall I can say I’ve become more confident and less hung up over what others were doing.